India prides itself on being the back office of the world. In recent years, exponential growth in the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) sector has helped fuel rapid economic growth in cities such as Hyderabad and Bangalore. The numbers are staggering. The overall Indian IT-BPO revenue is expected to grow by over 33 per cent and reach USD 64 billion by the end of the current year. Over the same period, direct employment in the sector is expected to reach nearly 2 million.

Increasingly, however, India’s position as the premier destination for off-shoring business processes is under challenge from the rapidly expanding BPO sectors of the Philippines, China and Eastern Europe.

India now faces a serious problem. The demand for English-speaking employees is outstripping supply. In spite of generating one of theworld’s largest populations of new graduates each year, India’s highly skilled workforce still lacks the fluency in English required by global companies. The growing importance of English language skills for employment is raising the profile of English education in schools. Regional governments are also increasingly recognising that English language skills are a key driver of economic sustainability. Meanwhile, corporate training teams are needing to focus on improving language and communication skills of new employees.

The British Council began its engagement with the BPO sector in South Asia in 2006 with a large scale project with HSBC. Over three years, five British Council consultants, working as implants at HSBC sites in Colombo, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bangalore and Vizag, trained 90 HSBC language trainers to deliver communication skills courses to 7,000 contact centre advisors. By the end of the project, 89 of the local trainers had gained a CELTA certificate,many passing with distinction. The two week induction training programme designed by the British Council consultants had been rolled out to nine global sites.

The British Council team also developed an intensive six-week general English course for HSBC which was offered to ‘near hires’ – job seekers who had failed to meet the job’s language requirements. This successful programme managed to convert 60 per cent of participants into successful ‘hires’. It was also during this project that the Council began working on a recruitment test for potential contact centre employees. A 20 minute oral interview was developed which tested spoken English skills against the Common European Framework scales of proficiency. The resulting data was used to inform recruitment decisions as well as uncover training needs.

In 2007, Project English won its second large scale contract with Barclays. Again the focus has been on developing the client’s training teams at sites across India. This year, the British Council has been supporting Barclays in the opening of a brand new contact centre in Noida, Delhi. Barclays are recruiting 2,500 new advisors and the British Council is using the oral placement test originally created for HSBC to test candidates at the initial recruitment screening stage. This time the test is being delivered in an innovative way – over the telephone from Chennai! A team of six language assessors administer 230 tests per week to job seekers in Delhi.

There are also plans to administer the test via VOIP – Voice over IP. The Project English team is now training assessors at Barclays to take over administration of the test. Looking to the future, the project team hope to be working with a range of new partners, including Infosys, Intelenet and Capita Offshore – the largest UK owned BPO – over the coming year.

This month the Project English team is celebrating another huge success. The British Council now has a LEP banner on the Infosys intranet site. The Campus Connect portal is aimed at 300 trainers in India who train 2,500 lecturers in engineering colleges around the country. This is part of the Infosys CSR initiative which covers 480 colleges.

This is perhaps the best example of the way in which the Project English team in India is addressing the English language deficit by bridging the gap between education and employment and creating opportunities for young aspirers across the region.